REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. (January 9, 2024) – The U.S. Army Redstone Test Center’s Tilghman Turner was named Digital Transformation Professional of the Year at the 2023 Army Acquisition Executive’s, or AAE, Excellence in Leadership Awards ceremony held at the Pentagon Jan. 9.
Turner is the Distributed Test Control Center, or DTCC, team lead within RTC’s Environmental and Component Test Directorate.
Leading the celebration was the Honorable Douglas R. Bush, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology. Bush honored AAE award winners, emphasizing their indispensable role in delivering the cutting-edge capabilities critical to Army transformation.
In alignment with the Army Acquisition Workforce’s commitment to transformation, this year’s ceremony introduced four new awards: Test and Evaluation Professional of the Year, Test Organization of the Year, Engineering and Technical Manager of the Year, and the award for which Turner was awarded: Digital Transformation Professional of the Year. These new awards underscore the strategic importance of these fields in shaping the Army’s future force.
During the period of June 1, 2022 through May 31, 2023, Turner exhibited superb leadership, immense technical skill and phenomenal teamwork skills as he led both RTC and the Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing/Space Cross Functional Team Working Group 4 in the planning and execution of a multi-organization Lab Based Risk Reduction, or LBRR, effort. The effort was in support of an emerging artificial intelligence-enabled fire control system that involved the successful execution of three Spiral events in a persistent test environment. Turner’s team created this persistent test environment to provide an operationally realistic, at-scale learning environment in preparation for future large-scale test events.
“The LBRR effort was scheduled for Fall 2023, Turner accepted the challenge of setting up a persistent environment and through his dogged determination and phenomenal people skills, he helped assemble a multi-disciplined team to successfully execute the mission,” said Steve Nine, the Chief of the Modeling and Simulation Test Division at RTC.
Maj. Gen. James J. Gallivan, commanding general of RTC’s higher headquarters, the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command, or ATEC, praised Turner’s work, “Tilghman and the RTC team are enabling realistic learning at a scale with multiple repetitions through the use of distributed testing.”
As a direct result of Turner’s leadership and hard work, the Army received a distributed, persistent operationally realistic environment in which to perform lab-based testing prior to engaging in a large live event. The LBRR was the stepping-stone for future distributed developmental and operational testing, data collection, and instrumentation efforts throughout ATEC, in which systems and personnel will not have to travel to the same physical space to execute a test; additionally, data recorded in a distributed event can be utilized in near real-time by analysts at each participating location.
“The distributed testing conducted in our DTCC led by Tilghman Turner directly supports ATEC’s strategy to modernize test processes and methods. This game changing capability is a direct response to improve test capabilities by providing risk reduction test options. Ultimately this is one more approach to ensure the success of critical Army Modernization efforts,” said RTC Commander Col. Joe Alexander. “The utilization of distributed testing promotes cost savings. Stakeholders can participate from any location. This enhances the Army’s test mission.”
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